When Niccolo Machiavelli wrote "The Prince" in 1513, he felt that there was a great deal wrong with the way Italian governments (of course there was no such thing as the country of Italy at this time) were being run.
The major problem, to Machiavelli, was the fact that Italy was disunited. This gave Spain and France, especially, points of access through which they could interfere in the politics of the Italian states.
A secondary problem, and one which also helped keep Italy disunited, was the amount of temporal (non-religious) power that the Catholic Church had.
Because of this, Machiavelli believed Italian rulers needed to be more ruthless in pursuing their goals. He wrote "The Prince" as a manual for achieving political success by (in part) disregarding notions of morality.
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